Editor’s note: The Palm Beach Town Council on Dec. 23 rejected Maureen Donnell and Fern deNarvaez’s request to display the Nativity scene, saying that doing so would violate U.S. Supreme Court rulings. The council members made their decision a day before a deadline set by a federal judge ordering them to take up the request. In the meantime, the Nativity scene was being displayed at a local church.

PALM BEACH, Fla. — Two women are seeking a federal court order to overrule a town's refusal to allow a Nativity scene to be displayed alongside a Christmas tree and menorah in a town park.

Maureen Donnell and Fern deNarvaez filed a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in West Palm Beach, arguing the town's policy violates their rights to free speech and equal protection. They also allege that the city's refusal demonstrates hostility toward Christianity.

"As Christians, we'd like to be represented," Donnell said. "If the Jewish people are represented with a menorah, we want to be represented as Christians."

The two women dispute Palm Beach town officials' position that the Christmas trees — which have no angels, stars or other religious ornaments — and the menorahs are secular symbols.

"The case law we have researched indicated that when a symbol such as a menorah is placed next to a Christmas tree, the religious symbol is neutralized and becomes a secular display. The menorah then is not strictly a religious symbol," said John Randolph, the town attorney.

DeNavaez called the town's position "a double standard."

"We have a menorah and a secular tree and not a Nativity scene," she said on Dec. 15. "It's discriminatory."

The suit asks for an injunction to allow a Nativity scene to be erected before Christmas.

The town offered to allow the Nativity scene outside the town center at Bradley Park, near a menorah that will be placed by the Jewish Lubavitch Center of the Palm Beaches tomorrow, the first day of Hanukkah.

The Lubavitch Center successfully sued the town in 1995 to use the Bradley Park site. Previously, Palm Beach did not allow any religious symbols on public land.

Richard Thompson, president of the Thomas More Law Center of Ann Arbor, Mich., which is representing Donnell and deNarvaez, likened the town's Bradley Park offer to "sitting in the back of the bus."

"This is but another example of the national movement to remove Christ from Christmas," Thompson said.